Is Snapchat dead?
Did Kylie Jenner just kill Snapchat or was it already a sinking ship?
Snapchat boomed out of nowhere. Now, it’s an advertising platform for multi-million-pound companies; a far cry from being known as ‘that shady app’ for people sent ‘those kind of photos’ that conveniently disappeared.
It seems that Kylie Jenner killed Snapchat overnight with her tweet:
A tweet that cost Snapchat ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
However, it’s probably a little more complicated than that. Snapchat was being beaten to the floor and Kylie’s just delivered the final blow.
I just have the image of Scar and Mufusa (RIP) at the edge of that cliff. Here’s the metaphor:
Mufusa = Snapchat. Kylie = Scar. Cliff = shit tonne of money.
This is the worst photoshop ever. But I wanted to bring the vision to life. (Rights belong to Disney)
Following this episode, they made a very distasteful joke about Rihanna’s domestic abuse at the hands of Chris Brown. This led to a lot of angry Rihanna fans, and well most people on Snapchat, leading to further damage to their bank account ($800 Million).
There were a few bumps in the road before this. Snapchat was growing fast and making so much money, that perhaps these blips weren’t taken seriously.
Here is the timeline of Snapchat’s ups and downs:
2011
Snapchat launches
Everyone’s like: ‘hey I’m on Snapchat, add me!’ and then you’re like: ‘WTF is Snapchat’
Everyone: ‘It’s this thing where you send a photo to someone; it lasts for 10 seconds and then it disappears’
You: ‘So, it’s for sending dodgy pics that you don’t want other people to save to their camera roll’.
Everyone: ‘Uhhh… I guess’.
2012
Funding
Major funding goes on. They raise $10million and then value the company at $70million.
One of the funders of Instagram also invests.
October 2013
Stories
Snapchat launches the famous ‘snap stories’ function, which was an instant success.
November 2013
Snapchat pisses off Facebook
Facebook tries to buy Snapchat for $3billion. To which they declined. This probably turned Facebook’s friendly competition into: “I WILL END YOU”.
That’s what I took from it, but both companies declined to make a statement, so that’s PR talk for ‘i f*ckin h8 u now’.
2014
Hacked
Snapchat is hacked to send people spam pictures of fruit smoothies.
(Not that important. Highlights security problems, but I included this part mainly because this the nicest sort of spam you could receive).
2014
Snapchat gets in trouble
Snapchat broke the terms of the Federal Trade Commission. If you’re a blogger or in advertising, then you’ll be aware of how hot they are on their rules. Basically, Snapchat made out to the public that photos would not be saved and would disappear, when, in fact, that wasn’t the case and actually they were stored on a cloud somewhere.
2016
Snap’s estimated market value climbs to $25–35 billion.
August 2016
Facebook goes head-to-head
Facebook updates Instagram to include Instagram ‘stories’. Like… Ohhhh no you di’n’t!’
The is one of the worst things that has actually happened to Snapchat.
Snapchat growth slowed 82% after Instagram Stories launched and a lot of its audience was lost to Instagram.
March 2017
Snap Inc. goes on the NY Stock Exchange, selling 200 million, priced at $17 per share, for a total of $3.4 billion
June 2017
Snapchat are worried
Downloads drop by 22% and Snap’s share price falls in one week from $27 a share back down to its IPO* of $17… In other words ‘oh snap’ (pun intended).
August 2017
One year on since Instagram copies stories
Snap’s stats are crap.
Snapchat’s monthly active user rate down from 17.2% to 5%
Snapchat’s Stories users halts at 166 million daily users, whereas Instagram now has 250 million.
“Facebook and Instagram didn’t have to outdo Snapchat. They just needed to copy it and put it in a more convenient place in apps that people of all ages already use.”
January 2018
People hate Snapchat
Snapchat’s big redesign bashed in 83% of user reviews (*2.)
February 2018
Kylie’s tweet
One simple tweet from a reality person wiped $1billion of Snap’s stock market value.
March 2018
Rihanna vs. Snapchat
A ‘thrid party ad’ – put in airmarks, because Snapchat may be trying to place blame on someone else – slipped through their approval process and the ‘joke’ fell flat. It was a game of ‘would you rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown?’. This alludes to the domestic abuse that Rihanna suffered at the hands of her ex-boyfriend and massive douchebag Chris Brown.
The result? Snapchat loses $800 million
Snapchat stocks plunged by 4 percent on Thursday, losing the app nearly a billion dollars this week—evidently due to Rihanna fans who decided to delete the platform from their smartphones.
‘Snapchat Lost $800 Million After Rihanna Criticized Its Offensive Ad’
So what’s going to happen?
Predictions
I don’t have a crystal ball, but it’s not looking great for the app, although I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of Snapchat. Now there are a lot of investors and companies relying on the app to make big money, so they won’t let it die so easily. It may be the case that Snapchat stops growing and gradually users begin to become inactive over a period of a couple of years, as advertisers stop paying.
The developers will do all they can to claw back their reputation and the users. I think it could be heading for a MySpace funeral. A site that was once visited MORE THAN GOOGLE, MySpace is now probably only visited by people looking up their old profile to have a laugh at photos from year 7. To fill you in, MySpace lost its users as soon as new owners began to monetise it. This is exactly what everyone is getting annoyed with on Snapchat.
What I think Snapchat might try next
Live videos
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even YouTube all have live video facilities. To compete and stay relevant, Snapchat may end up doing the same. Well, they’ll need to do the same. They dabbled with broadcasting the Winter Olympics in February, however, have no plans to let users launch their own live videos. Missing a trick there.
Influencer Marketing
They’ve had a lot of bad press from some of the biggest names in celebrity culture, so maybe to counteract it, maybe they’ll try some proactive positive PR by using celebrities to promote it, to counteract the negative from Kylie and Rihanna.
Make advertising easier for brands
Digital marketing research showed that “brands and media buyers believe Snapchat is the hardest platform to advertise on” over Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon. It’s also one of the most difficult to gauge Return On Investment. If Snapchat is to survive, they need to stay competitive with Facebook – where marketers put most of their marketing budget – so, Snapchat need to lure back their advertisers, so they can keep their investors happy and retain profit.
Snapchat will most likely have a few more tricks up its sleeves before it disappears. What do you think will happen to Snapchat?
Do you think Snapchat has had its day? Or do you think it will ride out the rough patch and survive?
Sources
1. Twitter
2. Tech Crunch
3. Forbes
4. Vanity Fair
5. Digiday
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